My day experiencing time travel with Amtrak

So I had a meeting with a customer in DC - and because I swear I'll never drive in DC if at all avoidable - dynamic street rules on signs with small print is just asking for accidents and fines - not to talk about trying to find parking in a city that likes to charge $20+ for a full day parking. So a co-worker gave me an idea - since the meeting was next door to Union Station why not take VRE - well, VRE ends in Mananas and besides there's no parking there unless you are "pre approved" and pay for the privilege - I decided to try taking the train from good ole Culpeper  And the fact that their schedule fit perfectly with my plans - I booked a ticket noticing that the price was about the same as driving (expense wise).  According to Amtrak.com there would be Wifi, soft-drink included, news papers and about an hour and a half travel time. My 9.45 would arrive around 11.20 in DC.

So in other words, I had plenty of time to do prep, fine tune my preparations with the customer, catch up with other work stuff while still travelling. It sounded like a win-win and I was really looking forward to it. I'm not new to trains - the first 10 years of my career was nothing but train and bus rides. I've grown up with public transportation - taking the train is just a means to a way - nothing fancy.  But do realize, that nothing fancy in European terms means fast trains, smooth rides, high speed internet, entertainment in the train cars on TVs, even news and other stuff. Some cars even have soft music.

Well, with Amtrak it's quite different. Amtrak's fleet of trains look like the grandfather of the trains that drove by where I grew up. Huge diesel engines with bells and horns. Very noisy and slow. I have to admit I knew this going in, but I was still surprised at how bad it is. I travelled as they did in the 1950'ies.

First the train station in Culpeper is barely a station. It's a worn down stepping stone with a building attached to it, that's used for pretty much a bit of everything. I had my tickets already, so all I needed was to park my car and wait for the train to arrive. First, finding parking was an issue - nothing posted AT the station. You need to know which parking lot in downtown Culpeper is reserved for Amtrak customers. So after asking for guidance, off I was finding a parking spot and I was ready. The waiting room is the visitor center for Culpeper - some garden chairs on the inside to sit on, so you can look/find brochures about all the touristy things in the area.  Not really business inviting, no WIFI and bad signals. I had to turn my phone to air-plane mode for it not to suck battery life.  A few minutes before the train was to arrive, I headed outside to the platform which was in huge disarray. Nothing had been done to it for decades. Holes and multiple patches of asphalt and you're standing right next to the tracks. Tracks that look like they're close to their 20 year life span.

I wasn't expecting the train to be on time, but 707 did arrive just 1 minute late.  The conductors look like they do in movies like White Christmas, manually helped everyone into the train - those are steep stairs - and the space is limited if you travel with luggage. Even regional trains in Europe has double doors - you just enter - no help needed. Amtrak conductors even have whistles to signal the engineer! Welcome to 1955! I got inside my car, found a seat (not reserved seats - you just pick on - not sure how Amtrak know when they are sold out - if I pay for a seat with certain features, I don't want to sit right next to the rest-room missing a tray etc). There's a LED display inside the car, but don't expect it to show what station is coming up. It just have EXIT written on it, and if the restroom are on this side of the train. So it never changes. I did find a power outlet at the seat so I guess this part is an "upgrade".

Plugged in I started my laptop op and looked forward to getting some work done. Bumpy rides makes it hard to type. It also seems to impact the WIFI. The train's WIFI while free barely managed to load a page without a time-out. Loading sites like CNN.COM took almost a minute - sometimes it didn't even complete. I gave up any of my social media sites, and there were several emails that never downloaded since they had sizable attachments. Of course, the data on my cell was spotty but at least it was more reliable than the train's WIFI. My phone gave up. Amtrak has a site that shows up that shows you where the train is, and when you'll be at the next station - nothing of that is posted in the cars - even this site had loading issues (it used Google map and a few other external features). It also shows how many devices are connected - at 122 it's clearly over-loaded. My transfer rates were in the 5-6KB/s - so I'm writing this tethered to my phone instead. At least that works.

So we head down the tracks - at around 40-50mph. After about 15-20 minutes it's clear that we'll not make DC on time. We end up being 30 minutes late snail speeding into DC.  And finding the exit on the train was quite a trick. We were about 20 trying to get out by the "cafe car" to realize that door would not open. Yeah - you cannot open the doors yourself - it's single file down the stairs only where the conductor is. And there's "only" two of them on the train.

We all give up after waiting a few minutes and start heading to one end of the train where everyone else was trying to get out. Everyone exits a train with hundreds on it - single file!  This is not a plane - there's doors everywhere - every car has 4 doors, two on each side. But just one or two are used at each station it seems.  In Europe, you just hit the DOOR button once the train is stopped, and it opens and out you go. Every car has 2-3 doors on EACH side so getting on and off is easy. The entry is usually level with the platform, so there's no step up or down. Wheel chairs can just "wheel in". That seems to be a huge operation with Amtrak.

So I get to my pre-meeting 30 minutes late, barely get time for a quick lunch but we did have a good chat with consultants on the ground. After which we went to the customer site, and (another story) I came to a government office with paper files litterately stacked from floor to ceiling. PAPER! I swear, I was back in time - only nobody were wearing suits or hats. We had a great meeting with the customer and I went to head home by train. A bit early in the train station - I roamed a bit, got a snack and looked for the gate for my train. Nowhere to be found.

Now is a good time to bring up the mobile app that Amtrak wants you to use. It's HORRIBLE! It doesn't save the trip you're on - nor does it allow you to associate a trip with an account. Only if you book while signed on, does it make an association. So I had to search for my ticket about 10 times as I browsed to do other things on the phone, and the app just moved back to the main menu and the message that no upcoming trips were available. Once you search for your reservation (again, you don't reserve a particular seat here) it will appear and you can see your "eTicket" - but it has no information about gate, delays or anything useful so you can tell where to go to board your train. And the station has TV monitors - just one for departures, which barely covers the next hour - it looked like it may be the next 15 or so departures - so if it's a busy time you have just enough to see the next 30 minutes or so.  But I did find a potential gate since the line name was mentioned there.  I even had to visit the information booth who didn't know 15 minutes before estimated departure what gate other than "it's probably one of those down there".  Well, about 10 minutes prior the terminal was given, and a huge line was forming outside the one door to the gate. Around a few minutes before the estimated departure a hard to hear voice on the speakers said boarding would begin ... but nobody was at the gate yet :(   Well, someone did arrive and we went down the escalator SINGLE FILE to the train.

I found my car, sat down and noticed the car was way hot. Well, there was no locomotive. No power, no AC. Turns out they "lost" their engine - and had to find another one. 35 minutes later we finally had one hooked up, AC was on and I could charge my almost dead phone again.

Now I'm still on my way home to Culpeper. We're again going about 20-30 mph - they told us it would take one hour to go from Mananas to Culpeper - something that usually takes about 25-30 minutes. I'll be home more than 1 hour late.  To make things worse, I made the bad decision to visit the cafe car to pick up some crackers and something to drink. That little venture took about 20 minutes standing in line that went all the way OUT the cafe car. Just one poor man standing in the cafe to serve everyone, and he had to wait for microwave dings and more - some customers took almost 5 minutes to serve.

I'm sitting here looking out at a very lush landscape crawling by in a snails passe. Pretty sure I'll only take Amtrak again when I have no urgency to be anywhere. Or when the adventure comes up in me to go back to the 1950 and visit the folks from this time.